VITS SETS MILESTONE WITH IMPREGNATION LINE PT 1,000
In 1957, VITS designed the first impregnation line at its present location in Langenfeld (Rhineland) and delivered it to Brazil.
Today - 64 years later - the destination of PT 1,000 is Gifhorn (Lower Saxony). The delivery distance is much shorter but the impregnation line, which VITS defined together with wood based panel and laminate manufacturer EGGER in April 2021, is as a project significantly more extensive.
Back in 2015, VITS joined forces with other specialists from the wood based panel and paper industry as well as environmental technology experts - to form the Deurotech Group. Locations, expertise and synergies have been expanded continuously since then. According to the motto „Excellence in Impregnation“, the partner companies of Deurotech Group are leading in the field of surface coating for the furniture and flooring industry.
VITS is mainly responsible for the project management at the EGGER site in Gifhorn und coordinates the deliveries of the associated companies of the Deurotech Group.
It was important for EGGER to have to manage as few project interfaces as possible. In cooperation with Deurotech Group, the entire process chain is handled from a single source:
- Vits Technology Impregnation Line PT 1,000 (roll-to-roll, web width 2,900 mm)
- Vits Technology Project Management, Deurotech Connected-Network (DTC)
- Vits Technology Roll Handling, Packaging, Robotics
- IFA Technology Tank Farm with Truck Emptying Station
- IFA Technology Resin Metering by Gravimet
- Airprotech Regenerative Thermal Oxidation (RTO)
- Wessel-Umwelttechnik Exhaust Air Equipment & Pipework
A small celebration was organised at the EGGER site in Gifhorn to mark the official start of the project – in compliance with valid Corona regulations.
For EGGER, the PT 1,000 is the 22nd VITS impregnation line in their corporate group. This will double the impregnation capacity for core papers at the Gifhorn site.
In addition to increasing capacity to approx. 80 million m² of core paper per year, EGGER has placed various requirements on VITS in order to own the most modern impregnation line in this business when starting production.
The high degree of automation enables, among other features, excellent performance to be achieved with an operating crew of two people and ensures minimum waste rates while maintaining high availabiltiy and production speed. The online center-cut saves material and reduces operating costs at constant production output.
At production start, the paper is automatically applied to the winding core. The packaging or wrapping of the produced rolls is done automatically – a robot places the rolls on pallets. Those are transported to and from the high bay warehouse by driverless transport devices.
The partner company IFA Technology supplies and installs the entire raw material storage area - connected to the resin mixing plant and in compliance with the Water Resources Act. Integrated in this fully automatic plant is also a recovery and re-use of residual quantities to avoid waste.
A state-of-the-art thermal oxidizer from Airprotech takes into account the legally required and increasingly stringent exhaust air limits – for a healthy environment and a sustainable industrial site.
To achieve maximum energy recovery from the process, energy is extracted from the cleaned exhaust air via two heat exchanger systems. This generates thermal energy for preheating the dryer supply air as well as hot water for heating the heating roll and the impregnation trough. The remaining energy from the hot water circuit is fed, among others, to the hall heating system. Wessel-Umwelttechnik supplies the piping for exhaust air and hot air.
The production management system „Deurotech Connected“ (DTC) connects the data and functions of all plant components with each other and offers, in addition to reporting, parametrisation and recipe management, mobile access to these data on request – in real time.
The project plan targets delivery in March and start of production in July 2022.
Langenfeld, September 2021
Press Release Impregnation Line PT 1.000 (649 KB)
